Bush Memo Allowing Torture Surfaces

[HuskyCaucasian]

Memo Signed by Bush Allows Torture

Direct Link to the PDF

 

Key Line:

"I accept the legal conclusion.... that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Queda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world because among other reasons, al Queda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva"

[whitesoxfan101]

This is so not shocking that the only reason I'd even consider it news is because it might be proof he did this. If John McCain can get elected to the presidency after what this clown has done to ruin the party (and country) the last 8 years, we might never see another democrat as president.

[HuskyCaucasian]

This is so not shocking that the only reason I'd even consider it news is because it might be proof he did this. If John McCain can get elected to the presidency after what this clown has done to ruin the party (and country) the last 8 years, we might never see another democrat as president.

Well, this could be the smoking gun. Let the record show, if this had been a president / dictator of any other country, he'd probably be investigated for war crimes.

[whitesoxfan101]

I'm not sure if this is the smoking gun since it was posted there almost a full day ago and I haven't seen anything on it yet until this thread. Then again, it could be and the news media just hasn't picked up on it yet. Agreed on the war crimes part though since the war itself was started on the basis of lies that could be considered war crimes.

[NorthSideSox72]

Here is the thing - legally, he may be right. The conduct against AQ may not be covered by Geneva.

 

But IMO, that's not even the issue. The greater issue is that this administration made a choice to eschew the moral high ground. They gave up the thing that, to me, is one of the greatest currencies this country has in world affairs - that the U.S.A. will act fairly and justly. So, whether or not AQ technically falls under the umbrella of the Geneva Conventions is not the key issue. The decision should have been obvious and clear - if you want the world to be there with you, and back you up in this war on terror, then you have to continue to be a country with fighting beside. And looking at the Iraq War, and some of these policies with regard to non-state combatants, we sadly went off that course.

 

[Balta1701]

The other potentially worth while point, on top of the point NSS makes, is that torture historically is great at 1 thing...getting the person you're torturing to give you the answer you want. It is in virtually all cases regarded as quite ineffective in getting information out that is actually correct or in getting information that is useful. We can even give examples from recent years to support this. We had an Al Qaeda high up guy, rendered him to Egypt, asked Egypt to let us know if he had any information about contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and viola, within a few weeks, the guy confessed all sorts of connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Colin Powell referenced his information during his speech to the U.N. It was all obtained under torture, and it was all lies to get the beatings to stop.

 

Similarly, we've had "orange alerts" triggered by information from Gitmo that were called off after a couple days because the information was deemed unreliable after a few additional days questionning. We don't have all the details on those, but the pattern follows quite well. Torture a guy, get info about your terror plot, then try to confirm it with a polygraph later.

 

On the other hand...the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which the FBI has hailed as an example of how to actually do things, was a slow process, took a year or two, but recovered virtually every bit of information we could have asked for about his relationship with other leaders, how his government worked, where the bodies were buried, and what happened to his WMD's.

 

If you torture someone to find out a piece of information...you will get that piece of information whether it is true or not. That is what torture is effective at.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I should note the memo tends to contradict itself. It says Taliban detainees dont have the right of Geneva, but they will treat them fairly. So, yes we can torture them, but we wont. Well, not when the memo was written at least. And has time has proven, they chose to torture them.

Edited April 11, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[southsider2k5]

The other potentially worth while point, on top of the point NSS makes, is that torture historically is great at 1 thing...getting the person you're torturing to give you the answer you want. It is in virtually all cases regarded as quite ineffective in getting information out that is actually correct or in getting information that is useful. We can even give examples from recent years to support this. We had an Al Qaeda high up guy, rendered him to Egypt, asked Egypt to let us know if he had any information about contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and viola, within a few weeks, the guy confessed all sorts of connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Colin Powell referenced his information during his speech to the U.N. It was all obtained under torture, and it was all lies to get the beatings to stop.

 

Similarly, we've had "orange alerts" triggered by information from Gitmo that were called off after a couple days because the information was deemed unreliable after a few additional days questionning. We don't have all the details on those, but the pattern follows quite well. Torture a guy, get info about your terror plot, then try to confirm it with a polygraph later.

 

On the other hand...the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which the FBI has hailed as an example of how to actually do things, was a slow process, took a year or two, but recovered virtually every bit of information we could have asked for about his relationship with other leaders, how his government worked, where the bodies were buried, and what happened to his WMD's.

 

If you torture someone to find out a piece of information...you will get that piece of information whether it is true or not. That is what torture is effective at.

 

Well hopefully we have a couple years to question people...

[max power]

All the memo does is recognize that torturing them is legal if that is the key line. Now what he does outside of the memo you can take issue with, but this memo is not too important.

[Balta1701]

Well hopefully we have a couple years to question people...

And hopefully we don't pick up the wrong person and decide to torture them, because we'll waste time investigating the lies.

 

Even on a short timescale, bargaining with a person is far more effective than torture.

[Jenksismyhero]

The other potentially worth while point, on top of the point NSS makes, is that torture historically is great at 1 thing...getting the person you're torturing to give you the answer you want. It is in virtually all cases regarded as quite ineffective in getting information out that is actually correct or in getting information that is useful. We can even give examples from recent years to support this. We had an Al Qaeda high up guy, rendered him to Egypt, asked Egypt to let us know if he had any information about contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and viola, within a few weeks, the guy confessed all sorts of connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Colin Powell referenced his information during his speech to the U.N. It was all obtained under torture, and it was all lies to get the beatings to stop.

 

Similarly, we've had "orange alerts" triggered by information from Gitmo that were called off after a couple days because the information was deemed unreliable after a few additional days questionning. We don't have all the details on those, but the pattern follows quite well. Torture a guy, get info about your terror plot, then try to confirm it with a polygraph later.

 

On the other hand...the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which the FBI has hailed as an example of how to actually do things, was a slow process, took a year or two, but recovered virtually every bit of information we could have asked for about his relationship with other leaders, how his government worked, where the bodies were buried, and what happened to his WMD's.

 

If you torture someone to find out a piece of information...you will get that piece of information whether it is true or not. That is what torture is effective at.

 

I don't think this is an accurate statement. While I agree that sometimes torture would probably only give you the answer you're looking for, that's just simply not an act that can be accurately tracked and recorded. You can count the "mishaps," because they can be made public. You can never know when it works for the good, as 99.9% of the time the government denies that any interrogation ever happened.

 

Also I think the Hussein situation is slightly different. He's a higher profile target, he's someone who knows he's going to die from public execution, and he's someone who never thought it was his lifes purpose to kill the citizens of the West in a holy war. More importantly, the information was of a different kind. Instead of "who are you working for" 24-style, it was "ok, so back in 1991 when we knew you were 9-12 months away from a nuclear weapon, how did you ___?"

[Balta1701]

I don't think this is an accurate statement. While I agree that sometimes torture would probably only give you the answer you're looking for, that's just simply not an act that can be accurately tracked and recorded. You can count the "mishaps," because they can be made public. You can never know when it works for the good, as 99.9% of the time the government denies that any interrogation ever happened.

While there is not and I believe can not be a classical medical study out there of whether or not torture "works", the evidence that is out there, both anecdotal from the people who perform successful interrogations and from the people who simply study them, strongly suggests that it does what I claim it does; gets you the answer you want to hear so that you can invade Iraq.

Torture does not yield reliable information and is actually counterproductive in intelligence interrogations, which aim to produce the maximum amount of accurate information in the minimum amount of time. In fact, popular assumptions that torture works conflict with the most effective methodologies of interrogation, as well as with fundamental tenets of psychology.

 

That was the conclusion of a research seminar in November composed of retired senior military interrogators and research psychologists from diverse fields. The group met at Georgetown University and formed a study group to consider the psychology of torture.

 

The interrogators, all of whom are also peripherally involved in training interrogators, have conducted interrogation and other human intelligence operations in Vietnam, Grenada, Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the ongoing war in Iraq. They reviewed for the psychologists the U.S. military training program for interrogators and the established interrogation methodologies, which exclude torture.

 

The psychologists were able to understand the effectiveness of the diverse, established interrogation methods in terms of psychological theories and research. The group then moved to an analysis of the ineffectiveness of torture as an interrogation tool. The interrogators maintained that, even in the most urgent situations, torture can not be considered a viable option. The involuntary circumstances of the disclosure would compromise the integrity of the information obtained. Decades of research into directly relevant topics such as social influence, stress, cultural and religious identification, false confessions, and interpersonal relationships point to the same conclusion, according to the psychologists.

 

Naïve assumptions that torture “works” fail to recognize that, under torture, the innocent are apt to fabricate and those with real information and training to resist interrogation are apt to alter the information or present carefully rehearsed lies instead.

 

A common argument for torture is the “ticking time bomb” scenario, in which a terrorist who knows the location of a bomb is tortured in a race to save lives. Interrogators stated that the terrorist would know that he only has to keep his secret for the short time until the bomb detonates—a time period known to him but not to the interrogators. Moreover, the torture would offer the terrorist a prime opportunity to deceive interrogators by falsely naming bomb locations of difficult access. In their combined 100 years of interrogation experience, the interrogators had never encountered a true ticking bomb scenario.

 

According to the interrogators, harsh approaches are typically the first choice of novice and untrained interrogators but the last choice of experienced professional interrogators. The detainee’s fear, the interrogators said, can easily turn to anger, which may escalate to the point that the interrogator cannot re-establish emotional control of the situation. The interrogator then loses all possibility of cooperation from the detainee. But cooperation is crucial to the goal of trustworthy information. Severe stress and injury, interrogators added, may also impair the mental ability of the detainee to provide accurate information.

Link.

 

Torture is a poor instrument of intelligence gathering, according to a recent study. “Torture doesn’t work under realistic conditions,” says the study’s author, Roger Koppl, a professor of economics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “There are situations in which torture works, but they are rare. Twentieth-century experiences with torture show that it is futile in most cases.”

 

Koppl argues that torture is useless for intelligence gathering, because governments cannot get around a basic problem. “They cannot make a believable promise to stop torture once the victim tells the truth. Victims know this perfectly well and therefore say anything and everything except what the torturers want to know.” Two problems prevent governments from making a “credible commitment” to stop torture once victims tell the truth. First, “they use torture because they don’t know the truth already. But that means that they can’t recognize the truth when the victim speaks it.” Second, “even if they know they’ve got the truth, the victim is afraid they will keep torturing him anyway.”

 

The study, entitled “Epistemic Systems,” applies game theory to social situations in which people must decide whether to lie or tell the truth. Game theory is the branch of applied mathematics that studies how people in conflict try to get the best outcome for themselves by picking the best available strategy. It has been used to study games such as poker and political conflicts such as war. Koppl is using game theory to understand when people lie. “As we all learn in childhood,” Koppl remarks, “deciding whether to tell the truth is not just a moral issue; it can be a strategic choice as well.”

 

Koppl’s article appears in Episteme: Journal of Social Epistemology, which publishes research on which social situations tend to produce truthful outcomes and which do not. “Philosophers used to ask what academic philosophers ought to do to get at the truth,” explains the journal’s editor Alvin Goldman, Board of Governors Professor in Philosophy at Rutgers University, “now we are asking an additional question: Which practices out there in society actually work best?” Sometimes the answer is surprising. “Koppl’s study is a good example of that,” Goldman remarks. “In the past, critics of torture have pointed to moral issues, while assuming that torture works perfectly well. Koppl has shown it was wrong to just assume torture works.”

Link.

 

Link 3.

The report explores scientific knowledge on interrogation in the wake of reported abuse around the globe. The study, sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity, was posted yesterday on the Federation of American Scientists' Web site, at http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf.

 

In it, experts find that popular culture and ad hoc experimentation have fueled the use of aggressive and sometimes physical interrogation techniques to get those captured on the battlefields to talk, even if there is no evidence to support the tactics' effectiveness. The board, which advises the director of national intelligence, recommends studying the matter.

 

"There is little systematic knowledge available to tell us 'what works' in interrogation," wrote Robert Coulam, a research professor at the Simmons School for Health Studies in Boston. Coulam also wrote that interrogation practices that offend ethical concerns and "skirt the rule of law" may be narrowly useful, if at all, because such practices could undermine the legitimacy of government action and support for the fight against terrorism.

 

The Bush administration has long advocated the ability to use aggressive interrogation tactics on terrorism suspects. After abuse came to light at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and the Navy's prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Congress forced the government to limit its approaches to long-standing military doctrine but allowed a loophole that lets the CIA continue such techniques.

 

The Army's new field manual on intelligence, approved in September, specifically bans some of the most aggressive techniques -- such as "waterboarding," beatings, sensory deprivation and depriving a detainee of food -- and draws clear boundaries for all military personnel who participate in interrogations. Army officials abandoned more coercive techniques because of the abuse scandals and evidence that Army and contract interrogators had developed approaches in the field based on vague guidance.

 

The new study finds that there may be no value to coercive techniques.

 

"The scientific community has never established that coercive interrogation methods are an effective means of obtaining reliable intelligence information," wrote Col. Steven M. Kleinman, who has served as the Pentagon's senior intelligence officer for special survival training.

 

Kleinman wrote that intelligence gathered with coercion is sometimes inaccurate or false, noting that isolation, a tactic U.S. officials have used regularly, causes "profound emotional, psychological, and physical discomfort" and can "significantly and negatively impact the ability of the source to recall information accurately."

[lostfan]

What kind of torture are we talking about btw? Blindfolding someone and beating the s*** out of someone with rubber hoses and then the next day tying their nipples to a car battery just because? I think there's just about a consensus on that kind of torture being wrong. If we're talking about aggressive but legal interrogations where the sissy definition of torture basically outlaws all useful tools in the interrogator's box except sitting in front of them and talking in a calm voice, I pretty much have to disagree strongly there.

[Balta1701]

What kind of torture are we talking about btw? Blindfolding someone and beating the s*** out of someone with rubber hoses and then the next day tying their nipples to a car battery just because? I think there's just about a consensus on that kind of torture being wrong. If we're talking about aggressive but legal interrogations where the sissy definition of torture basically outlaws all useful tools in the interrogator's box except sitting in front of them and talking in a calm voice, I pretty much have to disagree strongly there.

I believe the exact point that I'm trying to make is that believing something is "the sissy" thing is entirely the problem, because the evidence out there shows that is by far the most effective method for extracting correct information from the prisoner.

[Balta1701]

LOL, this is why I love the Google. I actually get to cite a piece by Scott Adams, the Dilbert comic strip creator, on torture.

But in all the news about interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other U.S. prisons in the fight against terrorism, there has never been any offer of proof that torture is the way to go. Even the latest FBI report, released last week, just lists the extreme methods interrogators used on their subjects. It never says whether they produced anything.

 

I used to think that torture probably worked well, at least in selective cases, based on the fact that it is so often the method of choice. All of those law-enforcement professionals around the world couldn't be wrong, could they? Plus, I imagine that if someone attached electrodes to my scrotum, I'd be talking plenty compared with the "let's be friends" interrogation method. So torture certainly passes the sniff test.

 

Yet the media have trotted out expert after expert to say that regular non-torture interrogation is more effective than torture. I discounted those experts as selectively chosen by the liberal media. One thing that all the experts seemed to have in common was that none of them had actually used torture. So how would they know that torture didn't work as well as an alternative?

 

But much time has passed since this debate began. You'd think that the proponents of torture would have produced one credible torturer to say, "Torture works great! I get all of my information in minutes and I'm home by 5 to help the kids with homework!"

 

Or perhaps the media could find one torture victim who would say, "I wasn't going to tell them anything until they started waterboarding me. Man, that stuff works!"

 

Now granted, it may be hard to find someone who will confess to being a torturer. And it may be even harder to find someone who was tortured and then is willing to endorse it. But it seems that with all the torturing going on, you could at least find a friend of a friend who saw it work.

...

The other day I was watching Bill Maher on his HBO show, "Real Time." That's where I turn for useful political opinions. (I wish I were joking about that.) Maher made a point that put things into perspective for me. He noted that if the situation arose where torturing some terrorist would clearly save American lives, it's going to happen no matter what the law says.

 

I think we all agree that it's possible to do too much torturing. But as Maher points out, it's impossible to have laws that prevent torture in the rare cases in which it may be the best solution. Human nature provides the safety valve. Laws or no laws, your grandmother would torture a terrorist if she knew it would save lives.

 

The burden is on torture's proponents to produce some evidence that torture makes sense as a policy. I don't rule out the possibility that it can be effective in some cases, but if it's being done in my name, I want some frigging evidence that it works.

 

Then we can talk about morality.

I'd just like to point out...the Bush Administration has taken this country to a place where its comic strip writers are writing op-ed pieces in the WaPo wondering whether or not it's effective to torture people.

[lostfan]

I believe the exact point that I'm trying to make is that believing something is "the sissy" thing is entirely the problem, because the evidence out there shows that is by far the most effective method for extracting correct information from the prisoner.

Not really. I hear so many people talking about it, basically implying it's a black and white issue when it's really not. It's almost completely gray. I mean, where do you draw the line? What is torture? What isn't? If nobody wants to define it then we'll just have interrogators sitting in a room with a real, live terrorist and unable to do anything besides sitting and talking to them without even doing anything that could be considered "aggressive" like raising their voice. The other extreme is just completely allowing everything.

 

Let me put it this way, if the average American saw what goes on in some legal interrogations without having any idea of the circumstances or context their reaction would be something like "omg that is soooo mean we shouldn't do that."

[BearSox]

you know what, if there is proof that a certain person knows something, and the info he (or she) knows is vital to national security and in the fight against terrorism, I have no problem with whatever means of torture they inflict on the terrorist scum.

[Balta1701]

you know what, if there is proof that a certain person knows something, and the info he (or she) knows is vital to national security and in the fight against terrorism, I have no problem with whatever means of torture they inflict on the terrorist scum.

And the question I give in reply is...are you sure you know what you know? We knew that Iraq was connected to Al Qaeda and we knew we had a key guy in that connection. The Egyptians got the guy to confess, and therefore, Colin Powell referenced it big time in his speech to the U.N. The guy clearly was Al Qaeda, the information was vital to national security, and we got the Iraq war because of it.

[Texsox]

you know what, if there is proof that a certain person knows something, and the info he (or she) knows is vital to national security and in the fight against terrorism, I have no problem with whatever means of torture they inflict on the terrorist scum.

 

What is really cool is if enough people tell the government *YOU* are a terrorist, that is enough *proof* nowadays. So we send you down to Gitmo, or contract to a third country, what will you tell them? Will you hang around for days explaing you know nothing and it is a mistake, and expect them to stop, or will you make something up to get them to stop? After all you are terrorist scum and we can inflict any kind of torture on you if it helps our war on terrorists.

[EvilJester99]

you know what, if there is proof that a certain person knows something, and the info he (or she) knows is vital to national security and in the fight against terrorism, I have no problem with whatever means of torture they inflict on the terrorist scum.

I agree with this 100%...if getting info from some terrorist that saves the lives of some of our soldiers then I am all for whatever means you may need to obtain that info.

[Texsox]

I agree with this 100%...if getting info from some terrorist that saves the lives of some of our soldiers then I am all for whatever means you may need to obtain that info.

 

Wasn't the use of torture one of the reasons we had to stop Hussein?

 

It's easy to make that statement, but it then places us squarely with the rogue nations. I think I would rather be among the ethical nations that do not use torture.

 

Does that also mean you would not complain when those same techniques were used on American soldiers? Since it would mean the US is rejecting the Geneva Conventions, changing US Laws, and most International Laws.

 

And if it meant US forces were forced to shift through hundreds or thousands of false leads, that wouldn't be an issue?

[bmags]

Wasn't the use of torture one of the reasons we had to stop Hussein?

 

It's easy to make that statement, but it then places us squarely with the rogue nations. I think I would rather be among the ethical nations that do not use torture.

 

Does that also mean you would not complain when those same techniques were used on American soldiers? Since it would mean the US is rejecting the Geneva Conventions, changing US Laws, and most International Laws.

 

And if it meant US forces were forced to shift through hundreds or thousands of false leads, that wouldn't be an issue?

 

I agree.

 

[EvilMonkey]

Wasn't the use of torture one of the reasons we had to stop Hussein?

 

It's easy to make that statement, but it then places us squarely with the rogue nations. I think I would rather be among the ethical nations that do not use torture.

 

Does that also mean you would not complain when those same techniques were used on American soldiers? Since it would mean the US is rejecting the Geneva Conventions, changing US Laws, and most International Laws.

 

And if it meant US forces were forced to shift through hundreds or thousands of false leads, that wouldn't be an issue?

Considering that the terrorists were already torturing anyone they captured (beheadings, anyone?), BEFORE the US was accused of anything, I don't see how our interogation tactics changed how our soldiers were and will be treated by terrorists. Terrorists are not part of the Geneva conventions and are not afforded the same protections. Argue that it is inhumane if you will, but since the rules don't apply to them, the Geneva Conventions are not being violated.

[EvilJester99]

Wasn't the use of torture one of the reasons we had to stop Hussein?

 

It's easy to make that statement, but it then places us squarely with the rogue nations. I think I would rather be among the ethical nations that do not use torture.

 

Does that also mean you would not complain when those same techniques were used on American soldiers? Since it would mean the US is rejecting the Geneva Conventions, changing US Laws, and most International Laws.

 

And if it meant US forces were forced to shift through hundreds or thousands of false leads, that wouldn't be an issue?

As if they are not applying those techniques on our soldiers as it is already... oh wait they just behead them...that makes the difference eh? So would rather we sit them down with tea and donuts maybe and ask them nicely for the info? I am sure that would gain us all the info we need. Hussein was murdering people by the thousands...but the true reason we went after him was not for that reason. GWB wanted to get him because his daddy missed his chance to get him.

[NorthSideSox72]

As if they are not applying those techniques on our soldiers as it is already... oh wait they just behead them...that makes the difference eh? So would rather we sit them down with tea and donuts maybe and ask them nicely for the info? I am sure that would gain us all the info we need. Hussein was murdering people by the thousands...but the true reason we went after him was not for that reason. GWB wanted to get him because his daddy missed his chance to get him.

Mr. Jester-

 

1. Per the rules of the forum, please read and reply to the MUST READ thread pinned at the top before posting in here. Thanks!

 

2. I can't tell if that last statements is supposed to be in green. Do you actually think that was the primary motivation for war? Or are you saying others do?